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Tuesday’s TV: Frost on Interviews

March 10 2012, 12:01am, The Times

From Parky to Paxman: Frost on Interviews (BBC Four, 9pm)BBC

BBC Four, 9pm In the early days of television, interviews were polite and deferential. Nowadays it has swung to the other extreme, with Jeremy Paxman setting the benchmark for the punch-up. But interviews can come in many different shapes and sizes, and in this immensely watchable programme David Frost looks at the different approaches and the highlights of each technique. In one of the earliest departures from deference, Robin Day lays into James Callaghan. The unseen John Freeman’s almost psychiatric quizzing reduced Gilbert Harding to tears. Michael Parkinson’s relaxed ambience encouraged his guests to open up, which Melvyn Bragg took even further when he got plastered with Francis Bacon. (Bragg also conducted the most memorable interview I’ve ever seen on television, when a dying Dennis…